Use VBA to replace RegEx strings with hyperlinks in Word

Question

I'm trying to search through a word document and replace regex matches with a series of static hyperlinks.

For example, if I get a regex match for "A-1" , I want to replace the "A-1" string with a hyperlink with Anchor = "A-1" and Address = "https://www.my_website.com/A-1" . My RegEx matches could be "A-1", "A-2", "A-3", etc .

I'm familiar with RegEx but I'm very new to VBA. What I have so far:

Sub FindAndHyperlink()

    Dim RegEx As Object
    Set RegEx = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")

    RegEx.Global = True
    RegEx.Pattern = "([A][\-])([0-9])"

    Set Matches = RegEx.Execute(ActiveDocument.Range.Text)
    For Each Match In Matches
        ActiveDocument.Range.Text = RegEx.Replace(ActiveDocument.Range.Text, (ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=Match, Address:="https://www.my_website.com/" & Match))
    Next

End Sub

This doesn't compile because it's expecting a ) after ActiveDocument.Hyperlinks.Add .

I think the problem is that the RegEx.Replace() method is expecting (String, String) arguments rather than (String, Hyperlink object) , but I'm not sure the best way to get around that.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try:

Sub FindAndHyperlink()
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Const HLnk As String = "https://www.my_website.com/"
With ActiveDocument.Range
  With .Find
    .ClearFormatting
    .Replacement.ClearFormatting
    .Text = "A-[0-9]{1,}"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindStop
    .Format = False
    .MatchWildcards = True
    .Execute
  End With
  Do While .Find.Found
    .Hyperlinks.Add Anchor:=.Duplicate, Address:=HLnk & .Text, TextToDisplay:=.Text
    .Start = .Hyperlinks(1).Range.End
    .Find.Execute
  Loop
End With
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Answer 2

I just tested this and it worked fine for me.

([a-z _:/.A-Z-1-9]+)

Notice the UPPERCASE and lowercase, plus the 1-9 (one through nine, inclusive), as well as the characters such as slash and period.